When
I was a kid there was a Saturday morning show called "Johnny
Jupiter". I don't know if it was national or regional. The concept
was that a boy on Earth could communicate with another planet via a
large television screen. Jupiter was a "planet of robots" as I recall
it, and as viewed through Johnny's television
screen all the robots were actually string puppets. But when
one of the robots traveled down to Earth to visit Johnny, it became
a large "Tobor-like" man in a suit.

I
have not seen anything about this TV show since. I was wondering if
you have any record of it in either words or pictures.

- stowsley

"I
remember Johnny Jupiter. The eccentric genius with the interplanetary
television was named "Duckworth" and one robot thatJohnny Jupiter
frequently sent down to help Duckworth out of one jam or another was
"Reject the Robot." Duckworth worked in a TV repair shop and his interplanetary
TV was a bootleg project he kept hidden in plain sight in a back room.

"Nobody
but Duckworth could ever see either Johnny Jupiter on the super TV or
the robots sent down to earth, except in one episode, which turned out
to be a dream of some kind. If Duckworth tried to show off his interplanetary
TV, mysteriously timely failures of the electronics would always occur.
Some kind of "obscurity principle" involved, same principle that shows
up in a wide variety of realworld human borderland experience--"

-
Bill L.

(Whatever
you say, Bill!)

"Philly
kid show host Gene London was the second head puppeteer on the show.
The first puppeteer/puppet-maker, Carl Harms, left the series following
it's cancellation from The Dumount TV Network.

"Gene
worked the puppets on the show under the name of Phil London. While
Gil Mack did the voices for the puppets, Gene also played: "Reject The
Robot" (in an early version of a Henson/Kroft Bros. puppet costume).
The other puppets character were fine. But According to Mr. London:
"Reject was clearly The Star!". That's because Gene was able to give
the character pathos and a lovable bumbling quality that allowed the
puppet to have a kinship with the viewers."